Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Unique

I've mentioned in the past (there's your understatement for the day!) that I'm a great fan of PBS. I'm NOT a great fan of "pledge week," which has morphed into "pledge-ten-days-or-more" of late. But I tolerate... barely... pledge week; it's a necessary evil. A minor digression: I lost access to KENW, Portales' PBS station (run by Eastern New Mexico U) when I switched my teevee provider from Comcrap cable to Dish Network. I now get KACV out of Amarillo, TX, and I suppose that makes sense to the Corporate Suits at Dish but it doesn't make sense to me. That bugs me for a number of reasons... no real "local content" is one... but another is KENW held its semi-annual begging down to a very low level. KACV, OTOH, is in constant beg-mode, or so it seems.

But! I've watched MUCH more of this begging than I usually would, mainly for the unusual and captivating regional Panhandle accent, which I find amazing. Here's an example I recorded earlier this evening, pay particular attention to the lady as she speaks, her accent just cracks me up (in a good way). You'll have to turn your sound WAY up... I apologize for the audio quality. I thought the MinoHD would pick up the teevee better than it did.

Ain't that sumthin'? The weird thang is I don't hear much of that accent here in P-Ville. There's some, to be sure, but not a whole lot.

Accents have always fascinated me, too. I can't recognize our regional dialects as finely as you can, Andy, but I love to listen to 'em. Some dialects are nearly impenetrable and it's a stretch to call them "English." I'm thinkin' of Merseyside (Liverpool) English in this case, but some Cajun dialects would qualify, too.

Buck, I'll try to keep this short. When we lived in SW Colorado, I would often get, "What part of Texas are you from?"

I'd just grin, and give 'em grace...seeing as I DID live my whole life 25 miles from the LA/TX line. But, when I ran across a Texan, I KNEW it. I'd ask them the same question, and always get a proud response.

Of course.

The area we lived in was being flooded by "foreigners" such as myself in those days. And, it was a real learning experience. I got to where I could pick out a Southern/Central/or Northern Californian, etc. Chicagoans were the easiest, though.

A guy I got to know pretty well was also a foreigner that bought & operated a thriving grocery store. Helluvaguy, really. The first time I met him I picked it up! I asked him, "You're from Northern Mississippi, aren't you?"

He got a huge grin on his face, and replied, "Tupelo!" After a short visit, he guessed that I was from LA. We made good buddies pretty quickly.